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i want to claim the ground that at least we have rules about war, and we try to stick to them, however, it's awful hard to do when only one side has those rules they have to stick to. and the other team can play as dirty as they'd like, with no reprecussions.

Yes. That is the high moral ground. You are saying we have rules (thus, more moral) and they do not (thus, less moral). I seem to understand what you are saying and you seem to agree with what I have said on this topic.

i'm not saying look the other direction either, i said i'm not going to nit pick an accident caused by a soldier.

I do not know what you mean by "nit pick". It sounds a lot like looking the other direction to me, but maybe you mean something else.

We're not strictly talking about accidents. I've posted links where it talks about how attacks were knowingly ordered against civilians. Or they have ordered attacks based on faulty "intel", which seems to be the only kind of intel our intel community can produce. No one seems to be accountable for that. I'm not saying the drone operators should be, because these are not their decisions to make. They are decisions made by generals, contractors and civilian leaders.

One of my job functions is safety. I deal with this kind statement often. Let me give you some information to help you understand the nature of accidents better.

Accidents do not just happen out of thin air. They happen for reasons. They happen because people have made bad decisions, done stupid things, or because they failed to take precautions. An engineer in my company lost his eye not long ago. This did not just "happen". He was not minding his business at his desk and his eyeball just fell out. It happened because he used a screwdriver as a prybar, pointed toward his face, and was not wearing mandatory safety glasses. The screwdriver slipped out of position and he jammed it into his eye. Accidents happen? No. All accidents are by definition, avoidable.

We do not dwell on accidents, per se, but we do investigate them to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated. How stupid would it be to let a second person poke his eye out for the same reasons? We investigate things as simple as splinters or tripping on a rug. We are even supposed to report and investigate "near miss" incidents - cases where someone narrowly avoided being hurt, by chance or skill - to make sure they are not repeated with less fortunate outcomes.

Does that seem like a reasonable approach when talking about dropping bombs on people?

And anyway, as I've already said, in many instances killing civilians was not a mistake. It was a calculated cost. In a traditional war, like WW2, it might be an acceptable cost. But this is not a war like WW2 and we will never fight a war like WW2 again. We need to understand that. We need to find ways to win these kinds of wars. Otherwise we will continue to lose war after war after war as we have Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

It seems to me aerial bombardment is a terrible way to go unless the goal is to completely eradicate a people. That might be an okay way to go. Just kill everyone. Cheaper, simpler, easier to "win". Or a different kind of win. But for at least the last 250 years or so (1000 years?) that has been considered socially unacceptable and a war crime.

Seriously? You are fresh outof ideas? Here's a thought, perhaps we could stop killing their children. Do you think that would be a nice thing to do? And hey, that might actually have the added bonus of helping us "win".

Here are just a few essays from one of my favorie websites regardind drones and how we wage war.